My journey through the world of surface pattern design

Friday learning: surface patterns in AI

As promised, here comes the second friday post about my e-classes. This time, I wanna briefly recap tutorials and classes concerning surface pattern design. As I’ve taken quite a lot of them, today I’m gonna concentrate on those dedicated to creating patterns in Illustrator. Next week I will write more about classes concentrated on creating pattern designs in Photoshop or mixing these two programs.
Adobe Illustrator is really user-friendly for creating repeats, and there is plenty of tutorials on youtube that will guide you through this process. Today I will limit myself to two courses I find the most inspirating.

It’s really wonderful course for anyone interested in Surface Pattern Design career, looking for a good introduction to AI tools and techniques. Bonnie is not only fantastic designer and blogger, but also great, motivating teacher and very warm person! This 3-days course (I was taking it live), is full of technical tips and step-by-step instructions, but much more than that! Bonnie shares her experiences and advice on how to “come in to being” as surface pattern designer, how to get inspiration, create own colour palettes and complete collections. The course is very well organized, full of eye candies, goes with some nice freebees and is in very good price (I had luck to see it for free, but probably I will buy the constant access in future). If you make all the assignments you will finish with your own whole collection!

It’s much shorter but also very valuable class on making beautiful patterns in Illustrator. Elisabeth Olwen (her lovely patterns you can see here) presents her own process of finding inspiration, digitalising work in Illustrator and making a repeat pattern. All that presented in a very clear way, with many examples of her beautiful work. You should finish the course with your proper repeat pattern design – it’s easy to make with this class!

Both designers work in Illustrator but have their own, different ways of proceeding. It’s cool to try both and see which one works best for you and your design!
Happy designing!